He nailed an innocent man on the cross. So, his blood is on his hands.
That would be history’s damning verdict on President Goodluck Jonathan, when the odyssey of eminent jurist, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, former president of the Court of Appeal, suspended for the past two years, is written.
For fleeting partisan glory, the Jonathan Presidency has earned itself eternal stain. It is odium well earned, for a reckless campaign against justice and electoral sanctity.
If this appears a tad too hard, a refresher on the Justice Salami story will do. His “capital crime”, to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), particularly its reactionary bloc in the South West, was that the Court of Appeal, where Justice Salami was President, flushed out election robbers in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states.
That the robbers stole the vote was beyond question. That the Court of Appeal, after the earlier tribunals, found enough evidence to confirm a heist and kick out the robbers was not in doubt.
The problem was the powers-that-be would rather have a quisling – like Justice(?) Thomas Naron, already dismissed for his judicial malfeasance in the Osun gubernatorial judicial challenge – do bare-faced injustice, which Justice Salami was not.
For that, they swore to “deal” with him. But the jurist took all of their vicious punches, and still remained on his feet of honour, until he bowed out at the statutory age of 70 on October 15.
Salami left in a blaze of glory, his integrity undiminished and his place secure among the pantheon of the brave, the committed and the principled, in Nigeria’s often troubled judiciary.
But his traducers are covered in the odium of their own plotting and conspiracy, so much so that the tattered umbrella is now home to ferocious and conflicting old and new power rascals, dancing naked in the market place.
Live by injustice, die by injustice! Gather by injustice, scatter by injustice! That would appear a fair epigram to PDP, now in the throes of breaking up.
It is instructive that a party whose South West rascals swore to destroy Justice Salami is, before our very eyes, itself self-destructing!
It is sobering lesson, if ever there was one! Live by intrigue, die by intrigue!
The anti-Salami campaign was started by a newspaper advert by Iyiola Omisore, a former senator and post-Olagunsoye Oyinlola Osun gubernatorial hopeful, in which he made uncouth and reckless allegations against Justice Salami and his Court of Appeal, suggesting the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) partisans had allegedly compromised the court in their party’s victorious appeal.
To be sure, Omisore was hardly neutral in the matter. For one, he had just been electorally pulverised in the 2011 senatorial race. For another, his bid to succeed the judicially sacked Oyinlola had turned a pipe dream. For the incoming Rauf Aregbesola, he knew, it would not be business as usual.
Heraclitus-speak, there was no stepping in the Osun river twice. Osun’s political dynamics had changed forever! From politics of rumour-mongering and blackmail, it was morphing into politics of development. In other words, Omisore saw stark political death staring him in the face! That advert was, therefore, a death spasm of sorts; hence it was a study in wildness and recklessness.
But that spasm sparked other high-tension conspiracies from even higher places. Pronto, came former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu’s strange “promotion” of Justice Salami, a sitting president of the Court of Appeal to a non-ranking member of the Supreme Court!
Salami rejected the Trojan horse, only to be swarmed by other conspiracies. That climaxed in his suspension, which the National Judicial Council (NJC), through E. I. Odukwu, announced on 18 August 2011. The NJC charge was that Salami had “perjured” Katsina-Alu, simply because Justice Dahiru Musdapher, next in line for CJN Katsina-Alu’s job but alleged witness to Salami’s claim that the CJN asked him to pervert justice in the Sokoto gubernatorial case, would not confirm – nor rigorously deny – the allegation.
But the same NJC, but now under CJN Musdapher, on 10 May 2012, lifted Justice Salami’s suspension and asked President Jonathan to reinstate the jurist. Was that CJN Musdapher’s brave but nuanced effort to salve his conscience, after opting not to confirm Justice Salami’s allegation? No one is sure now!
Before this decision, however, the Retired Justice Bola Babalakin Reconciliation Committee had put Salami in the clear. It had also cleared the justices involved in the Osun and Ekiti gubernatorial appeal cases of all wrong doings; but indicted former CJN Katsina-Alu, for going beyond his brief in the Sokoto gubernatorial case.
For “peace”, however, Justice Salami and indeed all of the parties were advised to withdraw their respective cases on the matter. Inasmuch as Justice Salami’s camp were not averse to withdrawing the cases, they insisted on reinstatement first – and soundly so, if you were dealing with a treacherous presidency.
It was at this juncture that President Jonathan, himself a beneficiary of justice in his battle against the Umaru Yar’ Adua presidential cabal, decided to vote for injustice, clinging to the cant of sub-judice. He would not reinstate Salami because of cases in court!
Perhaps, President Jonathan had emotional attachment to the injustice Salami’s Appeal Court was fobbing off? Indeed, during the Ekiti re-run, its Ido-Osi abracadabra and the fleeting heroism of Mrs Christian Conscience, there were media speculations that since President Yar’Adua had grave issues with his health, it was a certain Vice President, hitherto scorned, by the Yar’ Adua cabal as “spare tyre”, was the one flexing his muscles and giving the Ekiti vote robbers the Dutch courage to essay such in-your-face electoral robbery.
This remains an allegation yet to be proved. But not so, the president’s anti-Salami scheming, using every trick in the book, to stone-wall Justice Salami’s reinstatement, until his statutory retirement.
But as it happens, injustice and impunity have started consuming their own children.
Oyinlola, who sat on Aregbesola’s mandate for nearly a whole electoral term, has had his own mandate as PDP national secretary annulled. Even his “election” as “New PDP” national scribe has been judicially pulverised, on account that “nPDP” was unknown to law.
Olusegun Oni too, gubernatorial impostor in Ekiti, was also shoo-ed off his purported PDP office of South West national vice-chairman. Earlier, Don Quixote Oni had journeyed to nowhere, asking the Supreme Court to rule on a case Salami’s Appeal Court had already concluded. He fell flat on his face.
And Jonathan himself? He is now undertaker-in-chief of his PDP, the electoral rogues of which he scandalously lent the dignity of his presidential office. Yet, it’s morning yet on comeuppance day, for direr judgments are bound to follow!
But even as Jonathan and his PDP roil in the cauldron of impunity, it is a case of “two presidents”: one Jonathan, of the Federal Republic, who used his high office to attempt to crush an innocent jurist; and two, Salami, of the Court of Appeal, whose sheer integrity has turned the high-wire plots against him to glory.”
Jonathan nailed an innocent jurist. Not even all the waters of the Atlantic can clean his hands of his career blood.
